


Stranger than fiction

by Pseudonymous_Entity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 09:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16616477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudonymous_Entity/pseuds/Pseudonymous_Entity
Summary: Little Harry receives a collection of storybooks mysteriously on his 9th birthday, believing it a happy accident that he shares so many similarities -including his name- with the protagonist. Until his cousin Dudley's 11th birthday comes and brings talking snakes with it. Maybe they aren't storybooks at all...maybe they tell the future.





	Stranger than fiction

On the 31st of July in 1989, a very unusual thing happened.

Many things made it unusual, the first being the home of Vernon and Petunia Dursley was quite happily -and purposely- as un-odd as any home could ever hope to be. Thus something at all out of the ordinary happening was odd simply by its existence, let alone whatever oddity it may have of its own merit. On this particular day the one imperfection of number 4 drive, the address belonging to the home of the aforementioned Mr and Mrs Dursley, would himself be the sole discoverer of this particular very unusual thing.

Just after dinner on this perfectly ordinary day -thank you very much- a tire and somewhat hungry nine-year-old, he'd turned nine this very day in fact, in desperate need of love and affection, entered his cupboard under the stairs. He entered the cupboard, his cupboard, because that was where he lived. One simply couldn't allow flaws to run about in the open, could they? He entered his cupboard, shutting the door behind him. He stood in the semi-darkness and listened as his Aunt Petunia -for despite their familial connection or perhaps entirely because of it, he still lived in such an un-ordinary location- locked the door of the cupboard behind him. Wih the softest and most weary of sighs he sat on the cot on the floor. His bed.

Only to rise up very quickly. For there on his bed was a parcel. A parcel address to him, Harry Potter. That alone was monstrously odd to the boy, now known as Harry. He had never received anything before as far as he knew. His heart beat just a bit quicker. Perhaps he'd gotten something for his birthday. A real present. Just this once. Licking his lips, Harry moved toward the mysterious package, untied the string and pulled apart the unadorned brown paper to reveal..books. Harry blinked once. Blinked twice. No, they were still there. His very own storybooks. With glee he'd never before experienced in his young life Harry climbed onto his cot and inspected his new books. How strange, he then thought to himself. he books were about a wizard named Harry Potter. How odd was that? That they should share the same name?

Harry shrugged, placed the rest of the set to the side and opened the very first book. Young Harry lay awake far into the night rereading that night and every night following. The books his dearest friend, his greatest treasure, his only escape from his horrible ordinary family and his horrible ordinary life. Books about invisibility cloaks, Dark Lords, magical tournaments, and dragons.

It was in the following months and years that little noticed the strangest things happening. The ugly jumper his aunt tried to force upon shrunk until it wouldn't fit anything but a doll. That was certainly strange. And there was the other day in class just before summer vacation. He'd been drawing one of his favourite characters from the books, though he'd given her blue hair rather than bubblegum pink, and his teacher who wasn't at all fond of him said rather nastily that he'd be better of drawing more realist things, and that she didn't care for blue whether or not it was someone's hair. And if her hair, after a bit of glaring from Harry, turned blue right there in the middle of class, why, it was a coincidence. Wasn't it?

And only coincidence that he'd found himself on the roof when Dudley, his cousin, and his gang had been chasing him through the playground. And then there was the time his aunt had cut off all his hair and every bit of grew back overnight just as curly and wild as it ever was. That was Harry's fault, he didn't know why it grew back. Yet...strange things, odd things were happening.

If, perhaps, the next time little Harry was sent out to tend to the garden he should of, maybe, perhaps, carefully named the plants and flowers and their magical properties...if he should be heard whispering charms and spells, he was simply indulging in childish fantasy. Nothing more. And if -sometimes- they should work, it was only his imagination. Surely.

One day he woke up and it was Dudley's eleventh birthday. It came, just as it happened in the book. The presents, the number, the tantrum. Just as it happened in the book. Harry watched, transfixed, as his aunt and his uncle argued over whether to leave him home alone or to send him to a family friend, his usual babysitter having hurt herself and unable to tend to him. He watched, in the backseat with his cousin Dudley and his friend, as they drove into the zoo parking lot. As the nice cashier at the frozen sweets cart got his uncle to feel obligated to buy his a popsicle. And he stopped dead in his tracks when his cousin entered the retile centre. There, just as his books said it would be, was a glass enclosure for a very large, very talkative snake.

Harry went home that night, conversations with the serpent fresh in his mind, and he attacked his storybooks with a passionate fervor missing from his previous readings. Every character, every villain, every mistake and every adventure. He read them, he reread them. For he knew, Harry just knew, if he received his letter -The Letter- the letter that sent the fictional Harry to magic school, then he would know for certain. Was it all in his mind? Was it all his imaginings?

So he waited. He did his chores and ducked soapy frying pans. He tended the garden and painted the fence, he washed his uncle Vernon's car and he mowed the lawn. Harry Potter waited, and soon the day came. The 24th of Jully 1991, according to the books. The day it would come. Harry sat down to breakfast after servings his uncle and his cousin. Dudley kicked him in the shins under the table, today, though, today he could hardly feel it. He could hardly concentrate on anything at all. Soon he was sent to fetch the post.

Harry padded down the hallway in his dirty socks, reached out a hand and picked up the post.

There it was. A letter addressed to Harry Potter, the cupboard under the stairs. Harry swallowed and shoved it under his shirt. He went about the rest of the day in a sort of trance, only managing to get through it without catching a swat to the side of his head out of muscle memory or something similar, or so he reckoned. The very minute he finished his chores, the minute the last of the dished were scrubbed clean and put away, he walked, as quickly as he dared, to his cupboard. I wouldn't do to be caught now of all times.

Harry entered and listened as his aunt slammed the door shut behind him. He listened as she locked him in and the slats were shut. For a moment, frozen, he stood there still ad silent in the semi-darkness, bracing himself. When one lived a life such as Harry Potter, the flaw of number 4 privet drive, had lived, you learned to always be prepared to be let down. Then, taking in a deep, slow breath, he sat on his cot. He gathered his courage, he pulled out the letter and he broke the seal -The Hogwarts Seal!- flipped open the flap and pulled out the parchment within. Bright eyes roamed over the letter, reading, soaking it in. A wide smile curled across his face, large green eyes narrowed, glinting in the muted light creeping underneath his cupboard door.

For he knew it now. There was no more pretending and assuming he was pretending. He, Harry Potter, was a wizard first and foremost. Secondly? Glittering eyes swung down lazily to the books piled beside his cot, he knew the future. He knew the villains and their plots, he knew the about the gold waiting for him at the goblin bank, he knew about the Sorcerer's Stone and the questions he'd be asked on his first day of potions. He knew everything and nobody knew that he did.

One small hand reached down drew out the last book. He held in his hands the power to change the future.

The power to change the way the story was told.


End file.
